10/06/2015

The middle chunk of our preschool day we call Creativity Time. We start with a language lesson, the kids do a page of handwriting practice, and then they're free to choose among art, blocks, trains, and other creative activities.

Rather than preschool crafts where each student is making the same finished product, we focus on process oriented art. This differs from regular preschool crafts in that the finished product is entirely up to the child. I'm sure you've notice that with some of the papers coming home! We make different preschool-safe art materials available and let the kids dive in!

Trains and blocks are popular choices. I think a couple of the boys have played trains every single day!

The second week of preschool, we set up a transient art table. Every month we'll set out a new invitation to create, with a focus on the experience rather than a polished product. One way we use this space is to give children loose parts to create designs. But after the creating, the materials are returned to their containers--there's nothing permanent left. This idea comes out of the Reggio Emilia philosophy. (You can see more examples of transient art on this Pinterest board.)

In the early days of school, the kids are still learning about expectations and procedures and we're all just getting to know each other. For that reason, our first transient art was water painting on rocks. This is a really calming experience!

A couple weeks ago, we introduced the new light table. Of course, they love it!!

Soon we'll introduce play dough, story retelling, and many more types of blocks. The preschool party never stops!

09/06/2015

First week down and things are going great! I will try to use the blog to give you frequent updates on our classroom goings-on. This week, I'm sharing a peek at our tray work.

We start our preschool day with circle time and then go downstairs for a brief math lesson. After that, the children have 35-40 minutes of independent work time. For the first few days, I was prepared to shorten the time until they were able to focus for that long of a stretch, but they were little champs and did the whole 40 minutes the first day!

The kids start by getting a work mat. This defines their space and helps them know their boundaries and respect other students' spaces. After choosing their work space, they can choose among the trays. The trays are organized by color. Each color is kept on one shelf so it makes returning trays easier. The different shelves offer different types of work.

Transferring

Preschoolers are drawn to putting things in and out of containers. The transfer trays give them a chance to do that. Often I incorporate tweezers or tongs to the task. This type of activity helps develop fine-motor skills (tongs are particularly good at strengthening the pincer grasp--so important for learning to write!). Transferring also helps students increase they're abilities to focus and concentrate.

In the task below, students transfer little pom-pom chickies using a strawberry huller. They can divide the chicks between the two hens however they like. Yes, those are glass bowls. Letting the kids use breakable objects teaches them to handle materials gently.

Here is spooning practice to feed the piggy his corn.

We also have a couple tasks that have students practicing pouring water. The sponge gets a lot of use on this tray!

Practical Life

This tray is has a wooden block for screwing and unscrewing large bolts.

This task is dropping coins into a piggy bank. Pinching the coins works those finger muscles!

For this tray, students have to open and close doors to find the farm animals.

Sensory

Helping young students recognize their senses, how they work together, and how they can help the children learn is a huge part of preschool. For that reason, we put out a lot of sorting tasks like this one where they sort the apples by color.

In this section of trays, we also have puzzles and open-ended, brain teaser (preschool difficulty) type tasks.

Language

On the language trays, there are a variety of tasks to help the children identify letters and sounds, sequence events, follow directions, recognize rhyme and syllable. We also have cutting activities out. Working the scissors is a wonderful way to strengthen the muscles used in writing.

Math

We have lots of math activities available for the kids to choose. These are the bead stairs. The children hang the beads in numerical order. Good fine motor and math practice at the same time!

Patterning is another big concept in preschool. We'll work on repeating as well as growing patterns during this year.

Learning to count (saying the numbers in the right order) and counting out a certain number of objects from a group, are two different skills. For this tray, the child rolls a number cube (die) and counts the correct number of strawberries into a basket. Once a basket has 10 strawberries, she can start filling the next basket until all the strawberries have been counted.

Something I'm trying new this year are math provocations. This means setting up an open-ended activity were students can experiment with numbers and math concepts. This month we have some black dots and numbers to go with the book Ten Black Dots.

Science and Social Studies

There are only a few of these trays out right now. After a few weeks, I'll add more choices. To begin with, students can experiment with magnets and force.

One of the social studies trays is matching animal pictures to pictures of their homes. It takes some thinking!

Once choice that will be available all year is the continents puzzle. Several of the students have spent some time here already. This little gal started by taking all the pieces out and then was able to fit them all back in without any help!

This is just a little glimpse into how we filled our first two days. Two days?? I can't believe it's been such a short time--it feels like these little ones have been coming here for months!! Almost all of them have settled right in and they're ready to do great things!

04/20/2015

I can't believe how much these little ones have progressed since September. It's so wonderful to get to share in that process! Here's a peek at some of the things we did today. (Please forgive the terrible photos--I don't like to distract them while they're working so I have to get creative with the angles. And, on top of that, I didn't realize a filter was on. It looks like we're going through a blue period!)

We start the day with books and nursery rhymes and do a short math lesson. Right now we're working on figuring out the missing part. I count out 5 or 6 erasers and hide them all. Then I take out a few. The challenge is to find what's still hiding. If 1 eraser is out, or all but 1, they can solve the problem easily. It gets trickier if they can see a few. We're developing some good counting-on strategies to find the missing part! (Sorry, no pictures of this because I'm busy teaching!)

Then the kids choose their workspace and pick a tray to work on. These pictures show only a few of the 50 or so trays that are out.

This Easter egg puzzle gets played with several times a day. The kids like it because they can mix and match pieces.

Investigating seeds, of course we need to use a magnifying glass for this!

Do-a-Dot happiness!

Pouring little eggs into glass owl vases. We often use real glass or ceramic. Using breakable items helps children learn how to handle them carefully.

(See what I meant by creative angles? Her hair kept getting in the way of the picture, but I didn't want to disturb her concentration.)

Weaving ribbons--I think this is a skill they all know how to do now.

Ha! Look how blue my light gray carpet looks!

This is one of my favorite works. It helps students work with numerals and quantities and it's a great way visual of how each number is one more than the previous number.

Exploring the motion converter.

I made these sound shakers a few weeks ago and I was worried they wouldn't get much play, but they've been a huge favorite! Each egg is filled with one of five different items. The kids have to sort the eggs by sound, not color. This a challenging work for them, but they really enjoy it.

This days of the week work can be tricky for our non-readers, but they do pretty well with it (the right side of the board slides open to reveal the correct order if they get stuck).

The geoboard not only builds understanding of shape, but working those rubber bands is great exercise for little fingers.

Tonging eggs from one cage to another. Working the tongs and the latch on the cages helps strengthen the muscles needed for writing.

Here they are, hard at work! They have the option of choosing their own work space, but they like to group their mats together!

After work time we gather to practice the ABCs and have a literacy lesson. We've been working on the sight words: see, can, that, what, the. We practice letters, sounds, syllables, and rhymes or read a guided reading book. We've been learning about text features like bold words and speech bubbles. They're noticing them more and more in our books. One little girl chose a National Geographic bunny book for reading time and said, "This is a nonfiction book." Ahhh! Happy teacher moment!

The kids practice with their names and then they're off to play. Dressing up and playing in the playhouse are pretty much their favorite things to do!

Choosing today's costume:

Taking care of babies

Fixing dinner

Playing with puppets

The kids clean up from play time and we have 10 minutes of individual reading time.

After that we gather back at the rug for singing time. Their favorite song right now is All the Little Ducks Go Upside Down. They decided they needed to sing it upside down all on their own!

09/28/2014

Everyone has settled in. We have a routine and the kids are doing really well with it. We open the day with reading some favorite stories and practicing nursery rhymes. Then we start our brief math lesson. After that it's work time. The kids have learned how to get a mat and choose a good work space. They carefully carry their chosen work back to their mats and get started.

A lot of the work choices are designed to help strengthen the fine motor muscles.

Quarters to add to a piggy bank

Spooning corn to feed the piggy

Opening and closing containers

practicing pouring (the sponge is for wiping up spills)

tweezing little worms into an apple shaped ice cube tray (this is also good for developing the idea of one-to-one correspondence)

punching apple shapes

adding different shaped nuts and bolts to complete pictures

buttoning felt shapes

a first attempt at lacing--looks great!

painting with water on the Buddha board is a very popular choice

adding the correct number of animals to the barns

making designs and shapes on the light table

patterning with colors

sequencing events

The sensory bin is still played with for large chunks of the day. You may notice it's on the ground now instead of in the stand. Much easier to keep clean this way!

After an hour we head upstairs. We settle for a language arts lesson and then they're free to play.

They're learning how to collaborate to create elaborate train tracks.

Most everyone stops by the dollhouse at some point each day.

A lot of the preschool toys are boxed up and ready for their big move from Provo to Farmington, but we do have a lot of building toys available. The magnetic blocks: Tegu, Magnatiles, and Magformers are the most popular.

The biggest favorite, these days, is the apple stand.

They love taking turns being the cashier. The customers can buy different colors of apples and carry them off in little bags.

We end the day with 15 minutes or so of music time. Last week we learned Bats are Sleeping which requires them to sleep upside down. So cute!

This is the last week of farm and apple trays. Next week we'll start into more Halloween themed activities. Hopefully by mid-October we'll be ready to move into our new space. I can't wait!

09/07/2014

We start the day by reading--some new books, some familiar reads. We also work on nursery rhymes. Then we transition to a brief math lesson. I'll share more about this in later blog posts.

Then we start our Work Time. This purposely is a large block of time. We want these little ones to build their ability to focus and stamina for working on a task.

All the trays are set out and they are free to choose among them. You probaby got a good peek at them during the Open House. Right now there are 24 trays (most with a farm or apple theme), the sensory bin, and light table. Once we're in our permanent space, we will have room for more trays and more work choices, but this is a good number to start with.

We pretty quickly had to move the sensory bin from the stand to the floor. Fewer spills, let's hope!

The children choose a mat and set it out to establish their own work space.

Children may work together or choose to work alone. This opportunity to self-select work is important to a child's development. This (really long) quote explains it well:

When young children must select their own activities, they use cognitive processes that are not required when they merely are told what to do and how to do it. When children self-select, they must consciously plan, thinking ahead about what to do and how to do it. Then, as they carry out their plan, they monitor their progress toward completing these plans. These activities of planning, carrying out the plan, and monitoring self-behavior are a critical part of self-regulation. Self-regulation occurs when children can inhibit behaviors that are not condoned; focus attention on others, including the teacher; willingly take on roles directed by others; and monitor their behavior in different settings. When teachers notice children roaming the room without finding an activity that attracts their attention or sustains their interest, those teachers realize that they must not make play decisions for the children but instead must help the children plan and monitor their own play so that children can develop their own self-regulatory behaviors.

A lot of our work trays are geared to support fine-motor development and aquiring basic skills. We refer to this as practical life work.

Here is slicing magnetic apples.

Adding magnetic apples to the tree.

Lacing farm animals

Spooning corn into the pig's mouth

Tonging and sorting apples into buckets

Assembling a puzzle

In my preschool class last year, the 4-year-olds were very keen to work and play together and the 3s were content to do their own thing. They might be doing the same activity as a peer, but they were working independently. Now last year's 3s are this year's 4s and they just stuck together the whole time (it also helps that they've known each other for a year!). It'll be exciting to see these new littles make the transition from paralell to cooperative play.

Stamping

Stamping is a good fine-motor skill and was a very popular choice last week. I think everyone of the little ones worked on it at some point.

When it comes to art, most of our activities are concerned more with theprocess of creating than with the end product. During the year, we will do some "everyone follow these same steps and get a similar result" type crafts because those are cute and learning to follow steps is important, but mostly we put out some materials and let the kids create in their own ways.

At 10:30 we cleaned up and headed up the stairs to the play room. Here we will have short literacy lessons, but on the first day we just let them get to the playing!

The sensory bin is visited several times a day. Scooping and pouring split peas is so enjoyable!

This last month we've been focusing on counting accurately. We've practiced behaviors like lining up objects to make them easier to count, saying only one number for each object, knowing that the last number said tells the total.

Touch your nose when you know how many coins are in your pot!

Each pot had a different amount. After finding totals we were able to do some comparison of more and less. And even a little "How many more does he have?" Such good little thinkers!

We say the alphabet every day and everyone LOVES getting a turn to point at the chart.

We've practiced the letters P and R and A for handwriting. We're working on the sightwords see and can. The kids are getting better at recognizing rhyming words.

They're getting very creative with the blocks. One class worked together to build tall towers and had fun seeing what they could drop down inside.

I put out the marble track this month and it has been a favorite choice.

It's so exciting to see how they've grown and matured since the fall. Their fine motor skills are becoming more refined and their imaginations are blossoming. They're growing so quickly and it's a privilege to get to be a part of it.

02/22/2014

Hello! Sorry for the long hiatus. Here's a peek at some of our work trays for February.

Fine Motor

Matching socks and using a clip to keep pairs together

Spooning marbles into a vase. This has been a surprise hit around here!

(Yes, I buy color coordinated marbles. I just found some pretty green and yellow ones for St. Patrick's day!)

Stringing Conversation Heart beads

Arranging erasers on pegs

Weaving ribbons

Tweezing little pokey balls and transferring them to an ice cube tray. This also helps with one-to-one correspondence.

Scooping and pouring beads

Rolling and cutting sparkly snowy play dough

Cutting straws (look at that awesome scissor grip!!)

Tonging and transferring squishy hearts. The squishiness of the hearts means you have to have a really good grip to hold them in place.

Looping and glueing paper chains

Sensory

Sorting snowflakes by size

Adding objects to boxes and matching the sounds

Assembling puzzle pieces to match a picture

Sorting 3-D shapes

Matching the sound cylinders

Literacy

Adding letter coconuts to the Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom tree

Matching rhyming words

Writing letters on the magna doodle

Matching upper and lower case letters

Drawing and tracing shapes

Sorting objects by their beginning sounds

Math

Grouping penguins by 10s. There are 100 penguins in this set and I debated putting them all out, but I'm glad I did. The kids have had a lot of fun putting together the whole set of 100. I've been trying to toss in some counting by tens practice with these, but I mostly just get blank stares. :)

Working with the counting boards

Balancing heart rocks

Subtracting hearts by rolling a die and "mailing" them in the mailbox

Placing blocks and numerals in the tens board

Matching 2-D shapes to the faces of geometric solids. We've been doing a lot with 3-D shapes the past few weeks. Once these shapes were all set up, this little guy told me, "It's a shape museum!"

Of course, we've done lots of other activities, too. Here they're playing with the new dollhouse.

We've practiced some new letters.

You probably noticed all the fun Valentine crafts.

And the Valentine party was lots of fun! Here they are decorating their bags.

So far this month we've talked about hearts as a symbol of love. Last week we read a nonfiction book about our real hearts and studied a model. We'll do some more talking about hearts this week and even get to use a stethoscope!

01/20/2014

Busy, busy, busy around here. The igloo/polar play set has become the favorite choice during free time.

I love to see them cooperating to make a storyline together. Such growth from the beginning of the year!

The blocks are seeing more use these days, as well. These Tegu blocks make excellent cars.

After being mostly ignored, the puppets are drawing more interest. True, most of the puppet show consists of the puppets growling--or staring blankly--at the audience (me), but it's progress!

Last week we met a new puppet--Magic C Bunny! He helps us remember that the magical letter C can help us write so many other letters like G, O, and Q. Magic C Bunny was a big hit around here! We even got to color him in his car.

We've been learning a winter song, Little Snowflake. You can see a cute video of it here.

We read Pip And Squeak and made our own snowmen. Just like in the book, ours had carrot noses (or the foam equivalent of carrot noses :) )

Is anything more fun than playing with a parachute? We practiced raising and lowering it and working together to keep some "snow" balls from bouncing off while we shook the parachute.

We read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. The kids who already knew the story loved reading along with me. The kids who were just being introduced to the story caught on very quickly and joined right in with the repetitive text. It was a huge hit! Then we colored and cut out the animals in the story.

Spoiler alert! The Monday/Wednesday kids came on Friday so here's a peek of what the other class will be doing on Tuesday.

We glued in our Brown Bear animals.

We practiced the letter O. It's one of those Magic C letters. At first the kids were confused by the otter on the page. Some thought it was a beaver. Some thought it was a seal. I just got an iPad the other day, so it worked out great that I could find a video to show an otter in action.

We also had a few minutes of reading time.

I've been reading a lot of research lately that has made me even more passionate about helping our littlest ones love books. One study (I wrote about it here) looked at 3-year-olds and their vocabulary levels. They found that kids who know a lot of words early are the ones who do best in school. So I've been very purposeful in including a lot of Tier 2 (more advanced) words when I talk with the kids. I remind them to clutch the stair rail. We adhered the animals to our booklets. It takes about 20 (or more) meaningful exposures to a word before we really take it in. So I figure, let's get some of those experiences done now while their little brains are still wired to absorb language, right?

I finally started reading The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. It's a great book; I don't know why it's taken me so long to read it! The research he cites supports the importance of reading to kids. First, it helps them love books so they'll later want to read on their own. Second, because there's much richer language used in books than in everyday conversation, we support vocabulary growth by reading to kids. So I'll keep reading to them and keep giving them time to enjoy books on their own.

I just realized that you probably haven't seen the new picture in our preschool room. I had it framed ages ago, but just got a contractor to come hang it over Christmas break.

The print is Charley Harper's Rocky Mountains. It seemed appropriate since our windows look right out onto the Rockies! Now to just hang the vinyl trees on the other wall, and we'll be set.

There was another exciting change this week that the kids don't know about yet, but I'm sure they'll love. Our Speilgaben set finally came! It's so pretty!

In the mid-1800's, German educator Friedrich Froebel designed these learning sets, called "gifts," to be used in the first kindergarten. The idea behind them is that children learn through play, so each gift uses play to help connect the child to subsequently deeper understandings.

I'll introduce the first gift, yarn balls, this month and next month we'll add on the geometric solids in Gift 2. I can't wait!!

01/09/2014

2014! How did that happen?? I hope everyone had a lovely holiday. They were all excited to tell me about their Christmases when they came back.

We're back in the swing of things around here. I was surprised at how naturally they settled back into the routine. I wondered if, after such a long break, we'd have to revisit our class expectations, but they were just business as usual.

We have a whole batch of new tray activities. (Prepare for picture overload!)

Fine Motor Practice

Arranging snowflake picks in a jar.

Practicing sewing with lacing cards in fun winter shapes.

Using a real hex nut driver (yes, I had to Google what that tool is called!). It requires such concentration and coordination!

Using tongs to set penguins on "ice" blocks.

Spooning "jewels" from one snowflake bowl to another. The spoon is one of those that you'd use for soup at a Chinese restaurant, so it makes this task even more tricky.

Transferring glittery snowballs using tongs.

This is our first cutting tray (besides playdough). They've done an excellent job snipping bits of straw and paper.

Making crayon rubbings of snowflake designs has been a fun challenge.

Working at the bead tray. There are lots of pearls and crystals and other fun things to string on wintery pipe cleaners. I found some pretty blue and silver bells and talked myself into buying several bags so we'd be sure to have enough for all the bead bracelets. Unfortunately, those little bells DO NOT like to slide onto pipe cleaners. :( At least they look pretty in the tray!

Beginning Literacy Practice

This has been the most popular tray this week. It's a game I bought several years ago at Target. You go ice fishing for (magnetic) letters to spell different words. I'd orignally planned to use this with my 2nd graders, but it was so cute I couldn't bear to let them destroy it. Now I'm really glad I waited! This little guy played this tray almost all of work time today.

Writing letters in the sand tray.

Painting with water on the Buddha Board. This thing is a amazing! After a couple minutes the water dries and it's just like new!

Stamp, stamp, stamping winter pictures couldn't be more fun!

Developing Sensory Awareness

We have a couple different puzzles. One is a cube puzzle (each face of the cube shows a different picture) that makes the animals from Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? The other is a stacking puzzle to assemble a snowman. Because the round sections of the snowman's body are in halves, it requires turning pieces over to assmble them correctly. They have to really think about how it goes together!

This is a set of penguin nesting dolls. Because the coloring is nearly identical on each penguin, the kids have to really pay attention to the size to be successful with this task.

The little iceberg has a round base, making it wobbly. The player rolls the die to see which animal to add to the iceberg. The object is to add as many animals as you can before the iceberg tips.

In handwriting, we learned our first curvy letter: U! Their pencil grips are looking good and (for the most part) they're doing a good job remembering to start letters at the top. It helps that we have this song to remind us about our writing (we only sing the first verse).

We practiced sequencing our names using letters written on rocks.

We did some shared writing about winter. Afterward we circled letters that we liked.

We read A Perfect Day by Carin Berger which led to some spontaneous snow angel making.

I told them I was going to stick rags on their arms and legs so they could sweep while they were down there!

We began our investigation of sound and had a lot of fun pounding on some tone blocks.

Later in the week we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and afterward had the treat of watching the video.

They make the text pretty fun and jazzy, but it's been stuck in my head for about 3 days now and I'm going a bit batty! Everyone loved putting the letters on our palm tree.

Pouring Christmas lights from a large pitcher into two smaller containers and back again. There's also pouring practice with some shiny Christmas rhinestones. A couple trays have tongs for transferring Christmas balls. All that fine motor practice!

Sorting and counting Christmas buttons.

Adding mini bows to presents.

It's just a busy, busy place! Beading ornaments, cutting play dough, using the dot markers on an elf picture.

Playing with a North Pole play set. They LOVE flying the sleigh and reindeer around the room!

(Last month I think I forgot to mention that we were practicing the poem The Leaves. We only got through the first stanza, but hearing their little voices say, "The leaves had a wonderful frolic!" is one of my favorite things ever!)

We read Santa's Toy Shop (an old Disney book and a favorite from my childhood). We did some scratch art pictures. In both classes, the four-year-olds enjoyed these much more than the threes!

My apologies to the Thursday class, but I left my phone upstairs when we went downstairs so no pictures from those activities. You'll just have to imagine your little doing some Santa stickers.

We read Polar Express and did the train stickers. I don't know who designed these, but getting the Santa's sleigh sticker off the back was impossible!! I got smart with the second class and just cut that sticker off and saved us all some headaches!

We played with some jingle bells. Here we're investigating what makes bells ring.

And then we played Jingle Bells as if our lives depended on it! I think the walls are still echoing! It will be so sad when Christmas is over.